Five on the Fly: Will Andre Johnson be an invisible man moving forward?

1. He is who I thought he was – With Matt Leinart, I was hoping for the Texans to have a starter who just wouldn’t screw things up. I know there were plenty of Texans fans who had high hopes for Leinart, but I found most of them to be operating on mostly hope rather than anything concrete. Leinart hasn’t handled pressure very well in his limited starts in the NFL and I wasn’t all that excited with what I saw from him this year in the preseason. I felt like I knew who Leinart was as we headed into the game against Jacksonville and sure enough, he was pretty much still that same guy – Matty Checkdown. And you know what? I was okay with that as long as he didn’t screw things up. Still, this offense requires a QB who can make the safeties respect the big play down the field if you want to win in the playoffs and Leinart was never going to be that guy based on past history and based on the admittedly small sample size of Sunday.

2. When a running team can’t run – It is rare to lose a starting QB in the NFL and think you’ve still got a decent shot at winning in the playoffs, but when you run the ball and play defense like the Texans do, you can think that way. Hey, there’s always the Trent Dilfer led Ravens, right? With Leinart now lost for the season and the Texans on their 3rd string QB, the need for a dominant running game and defense ratchets up that much more. So how did the Texans run the ball yesterday in the second half with T.J. Yates at QB? Not well. While the Texans became extremely predictable in terms of their desire to keep the ball on the ground, the Jaguars really didn’t crowd the line of scrimmage with 8 or 9 on their defensive front and they weren’t run blitzing. The Jaguars simply won too many one-on-one battles and did a great job of setting the edge against the outside zone. Moving forward, the Texans can’t be too predictable, but they also must be able to impose their will on the ground and be able to run against the 8 man fronts that they’ll see.

3. Wade Phillips gets it done with four – While Wade Phillips threw some well-timed blitzes at the Jaguars, but for the most part he relied on his front four to rush Blaine Gabbert and they responded with seven sacks against the rookie. Connor Barwin ended up with four sacks while J.J. Watt had two and Brooks Reed had one. It was almost like Phillips realized at some point late in the first quarter that the Texans front was too much for the Jaguars over-matched offensive line and decided to take away any potential game-changing throws by Gabbert by sitting in coverage with seven. Then again, I get the feeling that Gabbert wouldn’t have been able to move the ball on the Texans if they had played with just 9 on defense.

4. Andre Johnson might disappear – After re-watching the game, I saw at least one throw by Leinart that should have gone to Andre Johnson on an intermediate crossing route. While Yates completed two passes to Andre, it was clear that Andre wasn’t back to his regular self and that QBs 2 and 3 didn’t really have a feel of how to get him the ball. If I were a defensive coordinator playing the Texans from this point forward, I would be committing 8 to the box and I would also be rolling my free safety over the top of Andre Johnson and forcing the rookie to beat me with Owen Daniels, Jacoby Jones, Kevin Walter and Arian Foster. I’m not sure that the return of Andre Johnson will mean quite as much as everyone had hoped based on the QB issues the Texans have an how defenses will probably play him now.

5. Glover Quin handles business – I wanted to utilize this final bullet point to spotlight the tremendous job of tackling that Glover Quin did against the Jaguars. Quin finished with 7 total tackles and 6 solo tackles and he rarely missed what he was aiming for on Sunday. With the defense being forced to continue their dominance, it will be important for Manning and Quin to continue to tackle like maniacs in the open field. While we all knew that Manning was a gifted open field tackler, it has been Quin’s improved tackling that has really helped the defense limit big plays.

Texans Podcast

John Harris and I talk about T.J. Yates and the Texans’ running woesin this podcast.